One issue that has received less and less attention in the run-up to November 4th, and especially since the Economic Crisis of 2008, is environmental stewardship and global warming. If the environment is mentioned at all, it usually is in the context of the American financial situation and the wisdom (or folly) of off-shore drilling and opening up ANWR to oil rigs. Interesting.
A topic that was once so hot as to justify a feature-length “propagantary” now is cold as ice, unless combined with a tandem discussion on the economy. It seems that Americans’ hearts are much closer to their pocketbooks than to their Prius’ these days. As unflattering and hypocritical as that may seem, it really isn’t too surprising given what certain folks have been telling us about human nature and it’s relationship to social market systems.
While some readers might begin to wonder if I’m nothing more than a one-trick pony given my repeated posts on economics, it’s worth pausing from all the hullaballoo surrounding the final presidential debate and take a look at environmental issues from an economic perspective now that a bit of the righteous indignation of the nation’s green-thumbs has been tempered by the wild fluctuations on Wall Street.
February 8, 2006 made headlines as a group of significant evangelical leaders signed and published the “Evangelical Climate Initiative: A Call to Action” (ECI), in which evangelicals were told that, “Climate change is the latest evidence of our failure to exercise proper stewardship, and constitutes a critical opportunity for us to do better” and called to, “recognize both our opportunity and our responsibility to offer a biblically based moral witness that can help shape public policy in the most powerful nation on earth, and therefore contribute to the well-being of the entire world.”
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